Conducting The After Action Review (AAR), continued
Instructions: Use the AAR Worksheet (below) as the basis for your review process. The questions you will be addressing are straightforward:
- What did we try to do?
- What did we actually do?
- Why was there a difference?
- What should we do more of?
- What should we do less of?
Record the information that results from the discussions and the conclusions reached in the spaces provided on the Worksheet. As always, review the form in advance to ensure that the questions meet the specific needs of your company, and modify it as appropriate.
As far as roles go, the facilitator is responsible for capturing the essence of the conversations and recording key conclusions, which represent the lessons to be learned. The facilitator also ensures that the team makes process improvement decisions based on the key conclusions that arise from the discussions, and that the AAR is documented (worksheet is fine for this) and kept on file.
The team leader disseminates the major lessons to other relevant people in the organization. These results can periodically be turned into best practice protocols for handling specific situations and should be made available to new workers, or new teams facing a similar situation that is unfamiliar to them.
AAR Worksheets can be used as an element in an orientation process, if in addition to being kept in some overall company record system, they are kept in a binder within the individual functional areas. Besides passing on information about how things get done in a functional area, they serve to initiate new people to the expectation that AARs are usual and customary, and that their input is important, as well as to focus them on the sorts of things they should be watching for, and how they should be thinking about what they see.
As always, ensure that everyone participates in the discussions, including the people who form the team that is holding the action review, as well as everyone representing their respective functional areas. The facilitator and/or team leader needs to make sure that everyone is heard from, not just those who always have something to say about everything.
The company’s managers are responsible for keeping themselves apprised of the results of these reviews, and developing the training required to disseminate the information and develop the skills to implement those lessons throughout the organization.